Former FBI director James Comey’s blustering reaction to the recently released Inspector General report, which found him not guilty of leaking classified info but also not exactly innocent, has earned him criticism from an unlikely source.
Fox News host Chris Wallace is done with Comey’s attitude. He shocked viewers by upbraiding the former FBI director for his “sanctimony” and “self-righteousness.”
“That is disturbing”
Wallace’s remarks came Friday afternoon on “Shepard Smith Reporting,” where he was joined by Trace Gallagher, who was filling in for the show’s usual host.
“There’s a sanctimony, a self-righteousness that is disturbing,” said Wallace. “[Comey] seems to think the FBI rules and regulations that apply to the 35,000 other members of that agency don’t apply to him. If he sees a higher purpose, and whatever he believes is right is the higher purpose, then he’ll just go around it.”
Wallace continued by noting that even though Comey won’t be facing any legal consequences for his actions — at least for now — it is not as if his slate has been wiped clean.
“He’s not going to serve a prison term, he’s not even going to be prosecuted for this,” he said. “We’ll see where the other investigations go, but it’s a serious stain on his reputation.”
Somewhere in between
The Fox anchor followed this up by emphasizing that, contrary to what Comey seems to think, the IG’s report doesn’t exactly exonerate him.
“On the one hand, it was damning what the inspector general said,” argued Wallace. “On the other hand, the Justice Department did not prosecute him and the final decision was that they couldn’t find evidence that he had passed classified information on to the media. Comey takes that as exoneration.”
The Department of Justice stated that “we found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the Memos to members of the media.” Yet, the official report reveals that Comey provided one of the memos — a transcript of his conversation with President Donald Trump — to his attorney, instructing this individual to share the memo’s contents — not the memo itself — with the New York Times.
Comey reacts
Despite this, Comey published two Twitter messages which go so far as to demand an apology from those who “defamed” him.
“DOJ IG ‘found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media,'” he wrote. “I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice.”
“And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me ‘going to jail’ or being a ‘liar and a leaker,'” he continued, “—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.”
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